麻豆约拍

Look at the current interest in baking, growing your own and hand crafts. Increasingly it seems, people are finding that making something for themselves, can be more enriching than just going to the shops. It's in step with our 'make do and mend times', but perhaps it's more profound than that.

Samira Ahmed reflects on how the impulse to make things with our hands is human instinct. The act of making demands concentration and can give time to reflect. Creating something handmade can bring deep satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

She considers the spiritual value of making by hand in Shaker communities and in monastic life.
And she hears stories of people for whom creating with their hands has particular significance, like the British World War II prisoner of war, who stitched subversive messages into his needlework samplers, right under the noses of his captors. Samira also visits the workshop of Eleanor Lakelin, who handcrafts bowls and objects from wood, and asks her about the meditative aspects of creating something by hand.

Featuring music by J S Bach, Alison Krauss and Billy Bragg and with the thoughts of writers including
Pablo Neruda, Carl Honore and Alice Moore Dunbar-Nelson.

Producer: Caroline Hughes

A Whistledown production for 麻豆约拍 Radio 4.